Looks Like Malaria is on the DECLINE!

[westwall]

Looks like old fraud is going to have to find some new cause celebre after he reads this article from NATURE!

Climate change and the global malaria recession : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

 

[Baruch Menachem]

I don't understand the co relation between global warming and malaria. Is there supposed to be more stagnant water or something with a warmer planet? Makes no sense.

A co relation with Yellow Fever might make sense, as the mosquitoes involved couldn't survive cold temperatures and died off during the winter outside of the carrabian. But there is no yellow fever anymore.

We compare the magnitude of these changes to the size of effects on malaria endemicity proposed under future climate scenarios and associated with widely used public health interventions. Our findings have two key and often ignored implications with respect to climate change and malaria. First, widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent. Second, the proposed future effects of rising temperatures on endemicity are at least one order of magnitude smaller than changes observed since about 1900 and up to two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures. Predictions of an intensification of malaria in a warmer world, based on extrapolated empirical relationships or biological mechanisms, must be set against a context of a century of warming that has seen marked global declines in the disease and a substantial weakening of the global correlation between malaria endemicity and climate.

 

[westwall]

I don't understand the co relation between global warming and malaria. Is there supposed to be more stagnant water or something with a warmer planet? Makes no sense.

A co relation with Yellow Fever might make sense, as the mosquitoes involved couldn't survive cold temperatures and died off during the winter outside of the carrabian. But there is no yellow fever anymore.

We compare the magnitude of these changes to the size of effects on malaria endemicity proposed under future climate scenarios and associated with widely used public health interventions. Our findings have two key and often ignored implications with respect to climate change and malaria. First, widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent. Second, the proposed future effects of rising temperatures on endemicity are at least one order of magnitude smaller than changes observed since about 1900 and up to two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures. Predictions of an intensification of malaria in a warmer world, based on extrapolated empirical relationships or biological mechanisms, must be set against a context of a century of warming that has seen marked global declines in the disease and a substantial weakening of the global correlation between malaria endemicity and climate.

What the warmers are trying to do is claim that because the world is "warming" the mosquitos are travelling to areas that they have never been before. This of course ignores the fact that 80 years ago a malaria outbreak in Archangel, a mere 125 miles south of the Arctic Circle, claimed around 3,000 lives and affected as many as 60,000.
And if you bother to read some real history it turns out that Oliver Cromwell died of complications of malaria and septicaemia on a cold September day in the marshlands of East Anglia in Great Britain way back in 1658....long before AGW theory was ever invented.

 

[waltky]

Progress in the fight against malaria - but more needs to be done...

US Promotes Active Surveillance in Global Fight Against Malaria
April 24, 2013 WASHINGTON — In the 13 years since the United Nations first marked April 25 as World Malaria Day, dramatic progress has been made in preventing, controlling and treating this deadly tropical disease. Experts believe that with improved surveillance and more diligent treatment efforts, the disease could be soon be eradicated. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, is playing a major role in those malaria eradication efforts.

The CDC, headquartered in Atlanta, conducts scientific research and provides technical support to countries around the world on how to deal with malaria, a leading cause of illness and death in many of the countries affected by this mosquito-borne disease. "The CDC has documented that in some of these communities, one out of every four medical visits of children was for malaria. One out of every two units of blood used for transfusion was for malaria. And in communities where they have implemented good control measures, we’ve seen essentially zero cases of malaria with good control and zero deaths. So we know tremendous progress is possible,” said Tom Frieden, director of the CDC. But in 10 countries with the highest incidence of malaria, experts say more resources are needed to prevent a resurgence of the illness.

Testifying before the U.S. Congress this week on his agency’s role in global disease eradication, Frieden said the challenge in the fight against malaria, which in Africa alone kills one child every minute, is staying one step ahead of the malaria parasite. Frieden cited the need for better public health surveillance, and urged Congress to fund better detection tools. He held up for lawmakers a diagnostic computer chip capable of separating and then sorting through the billions of "letters" in the malaria microbe’s genetic alphabet, giving doctors critical information in a mere four hours. “There are actually more than 10 million individual wells on this chip. We can take the fragments of DNA and with the supercomputer, put them back together like a jigsaw puzzle with tens of thousands of pieces to figure out where the connections are, whether it’s resistant, how it’s spreading and whether it’s becoming more virulent,” Frieden said.

Other challenges in the war on malaria, according to Frieden, are developing effective malaria vaccines and maintaining the integrity of artemisinin, the most effective drug available to treat malaria. The parasite has developed resistance to other drugs that used to be considered certain cures for the disease. But some 30 percent of malaria cases in Southeast Asia now show evidence of resistance to artemisinin. Virtually every new drug in the pipeline, according to the CDC director, is either an artemisinin-related product or synthetic artemisinin, and if malaria treatment programs are not well-organized and controlled, the effectiveness of these new drugs also could be compromised.

So, Frieden told members of Congress, a critical weapon in the war on malaria is ensuring that artemisinin is used wisely so it continues to be effective. “I think you can think of drug resistance and prevention of drug resistance as something we owe the world, we owe our children. If these antibiotics that we’ve been bequeathed by people who worked so hard to come up with them are preserved, they can be used to protect lives for many years going forward,” Frieden said. Frieden added that eradicating the mosquito-borne illness by 2015 will require unflinching policy commitments and sustained funding by the international community.

US Promotes Active Surveillance in Global Fight Against Malaria

See also:

Progress Has Been Made In Containing Malaria, More Needs To Be Done
April 24, 2013 - Malaria once afflicted people in nearly every country on the planet. Insecticides and eradication campaigns over the past century have contained this mosquito-borne parasitic disease to fewer than 100 countries. Yet in those mainly tropical countries where malaria is still prevalent, it kills more than 650,000 people each year, most of them children.

For every minute that goes by, a child under five years of age dies of malaria. Malaria has been diagnosed on every continent, but sub-Saharan Africa is the region most afflicted. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads malaria research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, calls the parasitic disease one of the world's worst killers. “We’ve made substantial progress in a global community way with malaria because there are several countries that predict that by 2015 they will have substantially -- by more than 50 percent and up to 75 percent -- decreased the incidents of malaria. Having said that as the good news, the sobering news is that we still have 660,000 deaths per year from malaria,” Fauci said.

Multiple strategies have been used to fight malaria. Bed nets treated with insecticide protect against mosquito bites. Those infected are treated with drugs early before their disease turns deadly. Pesticides are sprayed to control mosquito populations. Researchers, including those at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, are working on changing the mosquito that transmits the parasite that causes malaria. "We could stop this [disease] and control the mosquitoes by either eliminating them, which is very difficult to do, or by treating them to make them less effective in carrying the infection," said Dr. Peter Agee, the director of the malaria research program at Johns Hopkins.

Agee says Johns Hopkins has had great success with the mosquito treatment strategy in Zambia, where its researchers are working with an established hospital. "The burden of disease has been knocked down by 98 percent in a decade. So we've gone from 1,500 children being admitted to the hospital each year to a couple dozen," Agee said. But the success of the global anti-malaria campaign could also be its weakness, according to Dr. Fauci. "My concern about even saying there’s good progress is that we have been here before, not only with malaria but with other diseases. When you start to see a down-tick in things, people say, 'Well, we have the process or the disease under control. We can move on to emphasizing other things' -- which would be a really bad mistake," Fauci said.

Fauci notes there is no vaccine yet against malaria; mosquitoes that transmit it are becoming resistant to pesticides; and in some places, the malaria parasite is becoming resistant to the drug that treats it. Complacency and cuts in funding could allow malaria to reestablish itself in areas where it has been reduced or eliminated. And the human stakes are still high: in the time it has taken for this report, three more children have died from malaria.

Progress Has Been Made In Containing Malaria, More Needs To Be Done

Related:

Controlling Malaria Improves Health And Boosts Economy
April 24, 2013 - The World Health Organization (WHO) says malaria is preventable, treatable and can be defeated. In marking World Malaria Day, which falls on April 25, WHO says investing in malaria control pays big dividends in terms of improved health and economic development.

Malaria is a major cause of death and illness. Globally, the World Health Organization reports some 3.3 billion people are at risk of this disease, primarily in Africa. Although malaria - a mosquito-borne parasitic infection of the blood - is preventable and treatable, WHO notes it continues to infect more than 200 million people and kill an estimated 660,000 every year. Most of these deaths are among children under the age of five, 90 percent of whom are in Africa. But, these painful statistics belie the enormous advances that are being made in malaria control. The United Nations reports the MDG or Millennium Development Goal target of halting and reversing the incidence of malaria is now in sight. It says 50 countries are on track to reduce their malaria burden by at least 75 percent by 2015.

WHO’s Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, Dr. Fatoumata Nafo-Traore, says malaria control interventions are effective when used in an integrated manner. She says prevention, rapid diagnosis and treatment measures must all be available at the same time. “So that you use bed nets or spraying the houses so that you bring down the density of the vector [disease carrier]," said Nafo-Traore. "Then you reduce the transmission of the disease. While doing prevention, you need to continue treating those who are affected. And to be able to treat them, you need to diagnose.” WHO notes these global anti-malaria efforts have succeeded in preventing 1.1 million deaths and averting 274 million cases between 2001 and 2010. WHO reports 14 endemic countries (countries where malaria thrives) account for 80 percent of all malaria cases, with 40 percent of the malaria burden in three countries - the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and India.

Dr. Nafo-Traore says progress in controlling malaria is slowing because the funding is drying up. She says an annual shortfall of $3 billion is starting to slow the scale-up of key malaria interventions in Africa. She says $3.6 billion is needed immediately to be able to maintain universal coverage of malaria control interventions in Africa through 2015. Studies show malaria places an enormous burden on African economies, resulting in massive losses to economic growth.

Dr. Nafo-Traore says investing in malaria means investing in development. She says the return is high and cost is low. “Personally, I do not see a best investment than this one," she said. "If you put $1 in malaria control, the return on investment is $46 U.S. If you look at the cost to prevent, to treat and to diagnose…It is $5.5, yup $5.5 U.S.” Among the most serious challenges ahead is the emerging resistance of the malaria parasite to drugs, and mosquitoes to insecticides. The U.N. health agency is worried that growing resistance to Artemisnin-based Combination Therapies, the most effective anti-malarials on the market, is emerging in Asia-Pacific. The World Health Organization warns hard won gains in combating malaria could unravel, if resistance were to spread to other regions.

Source

 

[Old Rocks]

Looks like old fraud is going to have to find some new cause celebre after he reads this article from NATURE!

Climate change and the global malaria recession : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

Looks like you are trying to put words into people's mouths that they never stated.

 

[waltky]

Malaria vaccine show early promise...

Malaria vaccine shows early promise in clinical trials
8 August 2013 > A malaria vaccine has shown promising results in early stage clinical trials, according to researchers.

Researchers found the vaccine, which is being developed in the US, protected 12 out of 15 patients from the disease, when given in high doses. The method is unusual because it involves injecting live but weakened malaria-causing parasites directly into patients to trigger immunity. The research is published in the journal Science. Lead author Dr Robert Seder, from the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, in Maryland, said: "We were excited and thrilled by the result, but it is important that we repeat it, extend it and do it in larger numbers."

Many bites

It has been known for several decades that exposure to mosquitoes treated with radiation can protect against malaria. However, studies have shown that it takes more than 1,000 bites from the insects over time to build up a high level of immunity, making it an impractical method of widespread protection. Instead, a US biotech company called Sanaria has taken lab-grown mosquitoes, irradiated them and then extracted the malaria-causing parasite (Plasmodium falciparum), all under the sterile conditions. These living but weakened parasites are then counted and placed in vials, where they can then be injected directly into a patient's bloodstream. This vaccine candidate is called PfSPZ. To carry out the Phase-1 clinical trial, the researchers looked at a group of 57 volunteers, none of whom had had malaria before. Of these, 40 received different doses of the vaccine, while 17 did not. They were then all exposed to the malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Malaria kills about 600,000 people each year and infects more than 200 million

The researchers found that for the participants not given any vaccine, and those given low doses, almost all became infected with malaria. However for the small group given the highest dosage, only three of the 15 patients became infected after exposure to malaria. Dr Robert Seder said: "Based on the history, we knew dose was important because you needed 1,000 mosquito bites to get protection - this validates that. "It allows us in future studies to increase the dose and alter the schedule of the vaccine to further optimise it. The next critical questions will be whether the vaccine is durable over a long period of time and can the vaccine protect against other strains of malaria." He added that the fact that the vaccine had to be injected into the bloodstream rather than into or under the skin made delivery more difficult.

Commenting on the research, Dr Ashley Birkett, from the Path Malaria Vaccine Initiative, said: "They are clearly very early stage trials in small numbers of volunteers, but without question we are extremely encouraged by the results." He added that most current vaccine candidates targeted parts of the P. falciparum parasite rather than the whole organism. "This approach induces a broad response against a lot of different targets on the parasite," he said. There are currently about 20 malaria vaccine candidates in clinical trials. The most advanced is called RTS,S/AS01, which has been developed by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, and is in a Phase-3 clinical trial involving 15,000 children in Africa. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, there were an estimated 219 million cases of malaria in 2010 and an estimated 660,000 deaths.

BBC News - Malaria vaccine shows early promise in clinical trials

 

[waltky]

Malaria parasite growing resistant to anti-malaria drug artemisinin...

Rapid Blood Test Reveals Growing Resistance to Malaria
September 10, 2013 ~ Scientists have developed a simple, rapid blood test to determine the malaria parasite's resistance to artemisinin, currently the most effective drug available to treat the mosquito-borne infection. Unfortunately, the drug is becoming less effective. But researchers are hoping the test will eventually help patients with drug-resistant malaria.

More than 200 million people are infected with malaria each year, with a death toll as high as 1.2 million. Most of the infections occur in sub-Saharan Africa. While artemisinin-containing drugs are currently the most effective weapon in the fight against malaria, the parasite that causes it is beginning to develop resistance. Rick Fairhurst, a clinical investigator with the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Maryland, says most malaria patients used to be cured with three doses of artemisinin taken over a three-day period. “And now what we are seeing is that patients, like for example in Pursat where I work, we have about 60 percent of people [that] still have parasites at 72 hours, which suggests that these parasites could persist in the patient, which results in them not being cured," said Fairhurst.

Pursat province is an area in western Cambodia. Fairhurst, along with a team of Cambodian and French researchers, developed a rapid blood test that measures how quickly the malaria parasites in blood samples were killed or weakened by the active ingredient in artemisinin. The parasites’ survival was measured 72 hours after exposure to the artemisinin. If the parasite was still active at that point, the researchers determined that it was unlikely to respond to the drug. Researchers confirmed the finding in patients infected with malaria. Parasites in blood samples taken from people with drug-resistant infections had only a tepid response to artemisinin. Such a test could help public health officials identify pockets of drug resistance and map its spread.

Fairhurst says the blood test could also be used to follow individuals treated with artemisinin. “And if eventually we find if parasites are at a certain level of resistance in the laboratory, they have a certain probability of coming back in the patient, we can then say, 'Okay, this person is not likely to [be cured of their infection],' and we can come on top with a second drug," he said. Fairhurst says there are a couple of newer, more expensive anti-malarial agents that could be used but which experts fear could also eventually become ineffective against the parasite. An article on the rapid blood test for artemisinin-resistant malaria is published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Rapid Blood Test Reveals Growing Resistance to Malaria

 

[waltky]

DR-malaria remains a concern...

Despite Gains in Controlling Malaria, Drug Resistance Remains a Concern
April 23, 2014 ~ Malaria is a disease that kills more than 600,000 people every year. It debilitates even more. Each year on World Malaria Day, we take stock of the disease, what’s been done to contain it, and what still needs to be done.

Children are the most likely victims of malaria. They live in Latin America and Asia, but mostly in sub-Saharan Africa where the most deadly strain of the disease is found. Dr. Anthony Fauci heads the infectious diseases division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. "About every 60 seconds a baby dies from malaria; usually a baby living in sub-Saharan Africa," said Fauci. Survivors may suffer permanent brain damage, epilepsy, blindness or hearing loss. Mosquitoes don't cause malaria. But a certain type - the anopheles mosquito - can transmit a parasite that does. And someone with malaria then can pass the parasite on to uninfected mosquitoes and the cycle continues.

Dr. Peter Agre at The Johns Hopkins University says malaria is a disease of the poor. "They're sick because they're poor and they're poor because they're sick," said Agre. Dr. Agre heads The Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. He says developed countries rid themselves of malaria by draining swamps, using screens on porches, and constructing buildings in higher elevations where mosquitoes that carry the parasite don't live. People in poor countries can't do that.

A new push to contain malaria is under way. Funds for bed nets, insecticide spray, testing and medicine to treat malaria have cut the death rate from malaria by as much as 50 percent. Dr. Agre says much more needs to be done. “At The Johns Hopkins Malaria Institute, scientists work on many aspects of the malaria problem. The mosquitoes are one part of that, and one of our most successful areas of research," he said. Researchers are trying to change the mosquito so it can't transmit malaria. Dr. Fauci says other research involves developing new medicines and a vaccine. "We have been frustrated over many years of not having a highly effective vaccine against malaria," he said.

Along the Thai-Cambodian border, drugs used to treat malaria take longer to work. That's generally the first sign the parasite has developed drug resistance. If it spreads, researchers predict millions of people will die. "The real critical thing that we’re hoping for is with a combination of treatment, combination of prevention like bed nets and others, and a combination of a good vaccine, that some day, we can’t predict when, we may be able to eliminate malaria and essentially eradicate it," said Fauci. This would help the world's poorest children, their families and entire countries.

Despite Gains in Controlling Malaria, Drug Resistance Remains a Concern

 

[waltky]

Artemisinin losing it's effectiveness as malaria becomes drug resistant...

New wave of drug-resistant malaria threatens millions
5 Jun 2014: Scientists in south-east Asia call for pre-emptive strike in Burma jungle to contain resistant strain spreading to India and Africa

When an intense fever overcame 50-year-old Daw Cho Cho last spring, she took the same steps as when she last had malaria. Wary of village medicine and aware of the well-funded clinic across the border, she crossed into Thailand from her Burma village and came to the malaria centre for treatment. Seven years ago, her malaria was cured within a day. This time, it took much longer. Within three days, medication had killed the parasites in her blood and Daw Cho Cho felt normal, her symptoms gone. But a month later, the malaria came back. The drugs were unable to kill all the parasites in her blood, and they multiplied. She is among the thousands who have been infected with an insidiously evolving drug-resistant parasite that may account for 80% of the malaria on this section of the Thai-Burma border. The mosquito-borne illness is becoming resistant to the last anti-malaria drug standing – artemisinin – largely because of counterfeit medicines and incorrect usage.

A leading researcher at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU), a research centre based on the border and funded primarily by the Wellcome Trust, is taking radical measures to stop the spread of the new strain before it becomes uncontrollable. Dr François Nosten, SMRU's director, has studied malaria in this border region, near where the disease first became drug resistant, for three decades. He believes that in order to stop it spreading to India, then Africa, where the vast majority of the world's malaria cases occur, it's essential to chase the parasite into Burma's forests and pre-emptively treat even people who may not be ill. "If we don't do anything, we think that we know what's going to happen," said Nosten, explaining that as malaria rates decline, the strongest and most resistant strains of the parasite survive and spread. "It has always happened like this in the past, there's no reason to think this time will be any different."

Mosquitoes are commonly seen as the enemy of malaria elimination efforts.

The level of alarm Nosten and other scientists express over drug-resistant malaria contrasts with how it manifests in people, in these early stages. It acts just the same as any malaria, but is more difficult to cure. The number of cases creeps up slowly, spreads, then explodes. "The thing about resistance to anything – drugs, antibacterials – is that it rises exponentially," said Nick White, a professor with the Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Programme who works with Nosten on this issue. "There's a long period where it doesn't appear to be rising – and then it's rising." People who have had the new strain of malaria report that it feels no different to the disease cured in a day by artemisinin combination therapy just a few years ago. That may change, but for now, the malaria itself doesn't cause new symptoms or more complications – it's just becoming much more difficult to destroy.

My Yee Thaung, whose nine-year-old son recently had malaria thought to be drug-resistant, said he recovered, slowly, "but he's still not eating very well." These patients are among thousands participating in a nine-week study of their blood. The clinic, one of five malaria centres for Burmese refugees in Thailand run by SMRU, pays their transportation fees and a nominal amount to cover lost wages, and the patients return to give blood samples once a week. The number of malaria cases has shrunk in this region dramatically in the past 30 years, since Nosten and his team began to contain and eradicate it. When Nosten started the first border clinic, the parasite was a major killer, infecting tens of thousands of people each rainy season. Today, there are a few thousand cases each year. But those that remain are more likely to contain a wilier parasite, one that is evolving to evade what was first touted as a miracle drug.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Clue to Track Resistance to Malaria Drug Found...

Scientists Find Clue to Track Resistance to Malaria Drug
November 04, 2016 — Scientists have discovered genetic markers in malaria parasites linked to resistance to the key anti-malarial medicine piperaquine, and say their work could help doctors and health officials monitor and limit the spread of such resistance.

In research published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, the team also said a simple test using blood taken from a finger pinprick could show whether a malaria patient has parasites with the genetic markers, allowing doctors to prescribe an alternative treatment. Resistance to piperaquine recently emerged in Cambodia and has led to the failure of malaria treatment there. This and other spreading areas of drug-resistance are threatening global efforts to eliminate the mosquito-borne disease. Piperaquine is a powerful drug used in many parts of the world in combination with another anti-malarial drug called artemisinin.

Resistance to artemisinin emerged around seven years ago in Southeast Asia, but until recently the combination of the two drugs had successfully killed the malaria parasites there. Now, however, the emergence of piperaquine resistance in Cambodia has led to treatment failing altogether. “These malaria parasites are now resistant to both drugs, and since they are no longer being killed, resistance to both drugs will spread,” said Roberto Amato, who co-led the research at Britain’s Sanger Institute. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 200 million people worldwide were infected with malaria in 2015, and nearly half a million people died from the disease. The vast majority of those killed by it are children younger than 5.

А malaria worker carries a traditional medicine kit in a village near Pailin, Cambodia, Aug. 29, 2009. Scientists have found that conventional kits could be replaced with artemisinin, but now resistance to that drug is failing to stop malaria.​

Malaria is treatable if it is caught early, but growing drug resistance is becoming a major problem in many areas. For this study, Amato’s team worked with Rick Fairhurst, a professor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the United States National Institute of Health, and carried out what is known as a genomewide association study to look at the genetic basis behind piperaquine resistance.

They looked at about 300 samples from Cambodia, analyzing thousands of variations in the DNA sequence of the parasites and comparing these across samples with different levels of resistance to piperaquine. “By studying the genomes of these parasites we found two genetic markers that are linked with piperaquine resistance,” Amato said. “Not only can we now use these markers to monitor the spread of the drug resistant malaria, they will also help towards understanding as much as possible about the biology and evolution of the [malaria] parasite.”

Scientists Find Clue to Track Resistance to Malaria Drug

 

[Old Rocks]

Looks like old fraud is going to have to find some new cause celebre after he reads this article from NATURE!

Climate change and the global malaria recession : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

Climate change and the global malaria recession

• Peter W. Gething,
• David L. Smith,
• Anand P. Patil,
• Andrew J. Tatem,
• Robert W. Snow
• &Simon I. Hay

The current and potential future impact of climate change on malaria is of major public health interest1, 2. The proposed effects of rising global temperatures on the future spread and intensification of the disease3, 4, 5, and on existing malaria morbidity and mortality rates3, substantively influence global health policy6, 7. The contemporary spatial limits of Plasmodium falciparum malaria and its endemicity within this range8, when compared with comparable historical maps, offer unique insights into the changing global epidemiology of malaria over the last century. It has long been known that the range of malaria has contracted through a century of economic development and disease control9. Here, for the first time, we quantify this contraction and the global decreases in malaria endemicity since approximately 1900. We compare the magnitude of these changes to the size of effects on malaria endemicity proposed under future climate scenarios and associated with widely used public health interventions. Our findings have two key and often ignored implications with respect to climate change and malaria. First, widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent. Second, the proposed future effects of rising temperatures on endemicity are at least one order of magnitude smaller than changes observed since about 1900 and up to two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures. Predictions of an intensification of malaria in a warmer world, based on extrapolated empirical relationships or biological mechanisms, must be set against a context of a century of warming that has seen marked global declines in the disease and a substantial weakening of the global correlation between malaria endemicity and climate.

Climate change and the global malaria recession : Nature : Nature Research

So what that article is saying is that in spite of the fact that climate change increases the area that is favorable for the disease, human intervention, efforts to contain and eliminate malaria, have been successful enough to result in a decrease in the area where the disease in endemic. In other words, thank the scientists that have been fighting this disease for decades.

 

[Crick]

From Wikipedia

The disease is widespread in the tropical and subtropical regions that exist in a broad band around the equator.[2] This includes much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 2015, there were 214 million cases of malaria worldwide resulting in an estimated 438,000 deaths, 90% of which occurred in Africa.[5]

2) Caraballo H (2014). "Emergency department management of mosquito-borne illness: Malaria, dengue, and west nile virus". Emergency Medicine Practice. 16 (5).

5) "Malaria Fact sheet N°94". WHO. Retrieved 2 February2016.

 

[SSDD]

My bet would be that it is on the decline due to the fact that they are once again using DDT...

 

[Crick]

They never stopped using DDT to control disease vectors. My bet would be that it's on the decline because of wider, more effective control efforts.

 

[SSDD]

They never stopped using DDT to control disease vectors. My bet would be that it's on the decline because of wider, more effective control efforts.

i.e. DDT.

 

[Crick]

And several other varieties of pesticides: organo-phosphates and the like, not as persistent in the environment and thus not amenable to biological magnification and thus unlikely to start eliminating species at the top of the food chains. Efforts to eliminate standing water, mosquito netting, public education - these have all successfully fought malaria.